Anyone can be ambassador to the UK. Even Anna Wintour

Anyone can be ambassador to the UK. Even Anna Wintour

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: In today’s celebrity driven world, naming Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, as the U.S.’s next ambassador to Britain makes perfect sense.

The London posting almost always goes to a non-diplomat, someone a U.S. president needs to reward for past support, often financial. And Wintour has delivered in spades. In the last election cycle, she was one of Barack Obama’s top 10 fundraisers. She’s also a high-profile woman in a cut-throat industry.

Thus far, Obama’s picks are slightly above the 30% average for envoys drawn from outside the career foreign service. In his first term, he nominated 59 ambassadors, including 40 “bundlers” (collectors of campaign contributions) who lacked experience in the diplomatic corps.

The fact Wintour was born in Britain should be no bar — she is now a U.S. citizen. There is also a precedent in the form of the much-married Pamela Harriman, Winston Churchill’s ex-daughter-in law, who became ambassador to Paris (U.S. presidential wannabe Averell Harriman was husband no. 4).

How the Vogue editor would do in the post is another matter. Tact is not known to be her strong point, as viewers of the 2009 documentary The September Issue and the movie à clef,The Devil Wears Prada, will recall. However, a warmer, fuzzier Wintour is reportedly on view HBO’s In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye, airing this week.

The Daily Telegraph‘s Niles Gardner believes Wintour isn’t up to the job of “ambassador extraordinary plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James,” the official description of the post.

[I]t is impossible to see the editor of Vogue successfully handling highly complex issues pertaining to U.S.-British relations – for example, the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, differences over the Falklands, or the threat to US and British interests posed by European defence integration. The fact that Wintour is even on the short list for the ambassador post is a testament to the Obama presidency’s obsession with celebrities, as well as its contempt for the Anglo-American special relationship …
Since Obama took office, London hasn’t really mattered as much to Washington, with its obsession with the “Asian pivot” and its emphasis on supporting the European Project at the expense of reinforcing and building ties with key allies across the Atlantic.

Erik Maza at Women’s Wear Daily dismisses the “practically fossilized rumour,” which he says emanated in its latest incarnation from The Guardian, where Wintour’s brother works.

Wintour becoming a government employee — granted, one posted to Paris or London, as the rumour has it — is a turn of events as likely to happen as Hillary Rodham Clinton to Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the mayor of New York City. Condé Nast insiders say Wintour may not be all that interested in the dull intricacies of foreign diplomacy, though they speculate the administration might be considering her for some kind of political role, just not a full-time gig. Furthermore, Wintour recently signed a multiyear contract that comes with financial penalties should she leave it. But the rumour rears its head every now and then because it is mutually beneficial to all parties involved. If the source is in the administration, it allows the White House to reward a trusted political bundler with flattering press.

Bloomberg News’ James Gibney says you don’t need a career diplomat in London (or Paris or almost anywhere else in Western Europe).

Two things matter for top-drawer ambassadorships: The president answers your calls, and you don’t drool in public. And yes, a little money doesn’t hurt, either. Wintour meets the first two criteria, and probably has a few spare ball gowns in her closet to boot.
You don’t need a modern-day Metternich to handle relations with the U.K. — or, for that matter, ties with some of the U.S.’s other closest allies — because the relationship already has plenty of stewards, starting with the president and the prime minister. When they want to talk with each other, they just pick up the phone. That happens up and down the bureaucratic chain, which is stocked with plenty of specialists.

The Atlantic magazine’s Alexander Abad-Santos suggests the rumours could be a way for Wintour to cement her position at Condé Nast.

[I]f this plays out just like the past two times Wintour was reportedly set to become an emissary to the U.K., her people will be telling us she’s not interested … We heard the rumblings about ambassador (Annabassador?) Wintour in June, when her reps denied any interest in leaving Vogue: “These are just rumors. She’s quite happy at her current job.” Which isn’t that different from what her PR rep said in 2009: “The rep also insists that Wintour has no intention of stepping down from the magazine she’s helmed since 1988.”
The rumours have consistently allowed Wintour to tell us how much she loves Vogue. For what it’s worth, this whole thing could be a brilliant plan from Wintour’s people to ensure her hall-of-fame status at Vogue and further cement her place at Condé Nast. How many editors get to tell their bosses they’re rejecting a presidential offer every couple of years?